According To Plan
Commentary
These three texts let us know that though the events of Good Friday seem to border on the chaotic, there is nothing haphazard about what happened in the trial and crucifixion of Jesus.
Isaiah’s image of the Suffering Servant, the messiah who serves by suffering for others, is now understood to be a more prevalent meme in first-century Judea than hitherto. The passages from Hebrews assert that God’s will for humanity was perfectly performed by Jesus, whose suffering was intended as the ticket for the reconciliation of God and human. And John’s gospel is adamant -- though it is Jesus who is put on trial by religious and political authorities, Jesus is the judge of all things.
Pilate is not the judge. Jesus judges Pilate. Pilate is in near panic, while Jesus calmly describes his station as the king.
The only question is, how will people react? Peter denies Jesus. The women, along with the beloved disciple, are to be found at the cross. And Nicodemus along with Joseph of Arimathea will take care of the burial at great risk to themselves.
Isaiah 52:13--53:12
The following are a series of quotations from The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ by Daniel Boyarin (New Press, 2012).
“(The) generally held view, (is that) the idea of messianic suffering, death, and resurrection came about only as an apology after the fact of Jesus’ death” (p. 130).
“This commonplace view has to be rejected completely. The notion of the humiliated and suffering messiah was not at all alien within Judaism before Jesus’ advent, and it remained current among Jews well into the future following that” (p. 132).
“...they have a very strong textual base for the view that the suffering messiah is based in deeply rooted Jewish texts early and late. Jews, it seems, had no difficulty whatever with understanding a messiah who would vicariously suffer to redeem the world. Once again, what has been alledgedly ascribed to Jesus after the fact is, in fact, a piece of entrenched messianic speculation and expectation that was current before Jesus came into the world at all. That the messiah would suffer and be humiliated was something Jews learned from close reading of the biblical texts, a close reading in precisely the style of clasically rabbinic interpretation that has become known as midrash” (p. 133).
Hebrews 10:16-25 OR Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
Hebrews 10:24 is sometimes translated “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds...” The word behind “provoke” is the Greek word from which we get the term “paroxysm.” It refers to deep emotion so powerful that it is indistinguishable from gut-level anger. In the Acts of the Apostles, the apostle Paul has a feeling akin to paroxysm when he sees the many idols on display throughout Athens. Nevertheless, he controls those strong emotions and reasons with the Athenians in a collegial fashion in order to open their eyes to the resurrection of Jesus. This verse from Hebrews suggests that we are to have the same strong emotions about the condition of the world, but that we should channel that emotion to inspire the same emotion in others toward love and good deeds. When on Good Friday we stand beside the cross, we are to channel our emotions, disgust, anger at the injustice, horror of what is happening into becoming a community who answers hate with love, and injustice with good deeds. Which raises the question: How would you provoke people to good deeds and to love?
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9 demonstrates that regarding sharing our mortality and the bitterness of human existence, God through Jesus can state honestly “Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.” In Greek and Roman mythology the Olympian gods come frequently to earth to raucously carouse, sometimes sexually violating human beings along the way with no sense of regret. But when God really came to earth in the person of Jesus, it was to fully share our lives. The boss’s son did not have a cushy position, but was expected to work twice as hard, learning through suffering.
John 18:1--19:42
Jesus is in charge!
Roman society was built upon the twin towers of honor and shame. Kings had honor. Crucified criminals, the lowest of the low, died mired in shame -- naked, tortured, and after death thrown into a pit to be devoured by animals, leaving no body, no identity, no self.
Pontius Pilate is the representative of the Roman emperor, the son of a god, the savior of the world, the prince of peace, the embodiment of honor. Jesus of Nazareth is the epitome of shame. Yet despite the desperate circumstances in these chapters of John’s gospel, the positions are reversed. Pilate begins to understand that he may be shamed by his decisions during the trial of Jesus. Jesus, who will be crucified because of the claim that he is the King of the Jews, is actually the Son of God, the Savior of the World, the Prince of Peace. He is also the Lamb of God, as proclaimed by John the Baptist at the beginning of this gospel. Now we see the perfect sacrificial lamb slaughtered.
Pilate declares Jesus’ innocence. After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them “I find no case against him” (18:38). Yet Pilate is unwilling to stand by his convictions, and under pressure from the religious authorities and those who are present at the trial, Pilate allows Jesus to be cruelly scourged and mocked to within an inch of his life. If it was his aim to instill pity in those demanding the Lord’s crucifixion, he fails. Pilate, who ought to be the most powerful person in this narrative, has no power. Jesus has all the power.
Perhaps the only spine Pilate shows is his insistence that he will not change the sentence he has dispensed, and had written on a placard on top of the cross in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin -- “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”
“Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” So the spiritual asks. Peter and the apostles are missing. Who is taking a stand by the cross? The women. The beloved disciple.
Hanging on the cross, in agony, it says: “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” It’s a curious fact that Jesus did not choose his brother Jacob, or James, to do this important task. And by right the task of caring for Mom, should she outlive the oldest son, should pass to the next oldest son. But Jesus bypassed family altogether. As time went by his family would become leaders of the Christian church in Jerusalem, but we know from the gospels that initially the brothers did not live and his mother had doubts.
Jesus honored his obligations at the worst possible time. You and I struggle with pain and suffering, sorrow from loss, or simply the staggering weight of our everyday obligations, a treadmill that never stops and never lets us off.
Jesus, seemingly the most helpless character in this narrative, is in control throughout the ordeal, even choosing the moment of his death. “It is finished” (19:30), Jesus said, using a word that suggests that all is now fulfilled as was planned from the beginning.
Behold the Lamb of God, with unbroken bones, who is the perfect sacrifice. Having died before his legs could be broken, a cruel action that paradoxically mercifully sped up death, Jesus is the perfect Paschal Lamb slain for the sin of the world.
Who else is there? Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea will stand up for Jesus when there is absolutely nothing to be gained by doing so. He is not yet the risen Lord. Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedren who John identifies as a secret disciple of Jesus, goes before Pilate to request the body of a crucified traitor. It is dangerous to openly advocate for someone who received the harshest penalty. To stand up for someone who is shamed is to be shamed. Yet all four gospels relate that Joseph did exactly that, and saw to it that Jesus was buried in a new tomb.
Along with Joseph, Nicodemus ignores the shame and indignity of a man in his position performing manual labor, openly carrying a 75 lb. sack through the city streets, filled with burial spices that may have been worth more than $10,000. The two august individuals make themselves unclean by seeing to the burial of Jesus’ body, yet this shaming action honors them.
Isaiah’s image of the Suffering Servant, the messiah who serves by suffering for others, is now understood to be a more prevalent meme in first-century Judea than hitherto. The passages from Hebrews assert that God’s will for humanity was perfectly performed by Jesus, whose suffering was intended as the ticket for the reconciliation of God and human. And John’s gospel is adamant -- though it is Jesus who is put on trial by religious and political authorities, Jesus is the judge of all things.
Pilate is not the judge. Jesus judges Pilate. Pilate is in near panic, while Jesus calmly describes his station as the king.
The only question is, how will people react? Peter denies Jesus. The women, along with the beloved disciple, are to be found at the cross. And Nicodemus along with Joseph of Arimathea will take care of the burial at great risk to themselves.
Isaiah 52:13--53:12
The following are a series of quotations from The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ by Daniel Boyarin (New Press, 2012).
“(The) generally held view, (is that) the idea of messianic suffering, death, and resurrection came about only as an apology after the fact of Jesus’ death” (p. 130).
“This commonplace view has to be rejected completely. The notion of the humiliated and suffering messiah was not at all alien within Judaism before Jesus’ advent, and it remained current among Jews well into the future following that” (p. 132).
“...they have a very strong textual base for the view that the suffering messiah is based in deeply rooted Jewish texts early and late. Jews, it seems, had no difficulty whatever with understanding a messiah who would vicariously suffer to redeem the world. Once again, what has been alledgedly ascribed to Jesus after the fact is, in fact, a piece of entrenched messianic speculation and expectation that was current before Jesus came into the world at all. That the messiah would suffer and be humiliated was something Jews learned from close reading of the biblical texts, a close reading in precisely the style of clasically rabbinic interpretation that has become known as midrash” (p. 133).
Hebrews 10:16-25 OR Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
Hebrews 10:24 is sometimes translated “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds...” The word behind “provoke” is the Greek word from which we get the term “paroxysm.” It refers to deep emotion so powerful that it is indistinguishable from gut-level anger. In the Acts of the Apostles, the apostle Paul has a feeling akin to paroxysm when he sees the many idols on display throughout Athens. Nevertheless, he controls those strong emotions and reasons with the Athenians in a collegial fashion in order to open their eyes to the resurrection of Jesus. This verse from Hebrews suggests that we are to have the same strong emotions about the condition of the world, but that we should channel that emotion to inspire the same emotion in others toward love and good deeds. When on Good Friday we stand beside the cross, we are to channel our emotions, disgust, anger at the injustice, horror of what is happening into becoming a community who answers hate with love, and injustice with good deeds. Which raises the question: How would you provoke people to good deeds and to love?
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9 demonstrates that regarding sharing our mortality and the bitterness of human existence, God through Jesus can state honestly “Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.” In Greek and Roman mythology the Olympian gods come frequently to earth to raucously carouse, sometimes sexually violating human beings along the way with no sense of regret. But when God really came to earth in the person of Jesus, it was to fully share our lives. The boss’s son did not have a cushy position, but was expected to work twice as hard, learning through suffering.
John 18:1--19:42
Jesus is in charge!
Roman society was built upon the twin towers of honor and shame. Kings had honor. Crucified criminals, the lowest of the low, died mired in shame -- naked, tortured, and after death thrown into a pit to be devoured by animals, leaving no body, no identity, no self.
Pontius Pilate is the representative of the Roman emperor, the son of a god, the savior of the world, the prince of peace, the embodiment of honor. Jesus of Nazareth is the epitome of shame. Yet despite the desperate circumstances in these chapters of John’s gospel, the positions are reversed. Pilate begins to understand that he may be shamed by his decisions during the trial of Jesus. Jesus, who will be crucified because of the claim that he is the King of the Jews, is actually the Son of God, the Savior of the World, the Prince of Peace. He is also the Lamb of God, as proclaimed by John the Baptist at the beginning of this gospel. Now we see the perfect sacrificial lamb slaughtered.
Pilate declares Jesus’ innocence. After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them “I find no case against him” (18:38). Yet Pilate is unwilling to stand by his convictions, and under pressure from the religious authorities and those who are present at the trial, Pilate allows Jesus to be cruelly scourged and mocked to within an inch of his life. If it was his aim to instill pity in those demanding the Lord’s crucifixion, he fails. Pilate, who ought to be the most powerful person in this narrative, has no power. Jesus has all the power.
Perhaps the only spine Pilate shows is his insistence that he will not change the sentence he has dispensed, and had written on a placard on top of the cross in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin -- “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”
“Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” So the spiritual asks. Peter and the apostles are missing. Who is taking a stand by the cross? The women. The beloved disciple.
Hanging on the cross, in agony, it says: “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” It’s a curious fact that Jesus did not choose his brother Jacob, or James, to do this important task. And by right the task of caring for Mom, should she outlive the oldest son, should pass to the next oldest son. But Jesus bypassed family altogether. As time went by his family would become leaders of the Christian church in Jerusalem, but we know from the gospels that initially the brothers did not live and his mother had doubts.
Jesus honored his obligations at the worst possible time. You and I struggle with pain and suffering, sorrow from loss, or simply the staggering weight of our everyday obligations, a treadmill that never stops and never lets us off.
Jesus, seemingly the most helpless character in this narrative, is in control throughout the ordeal, even choosing the moment of his death. “It is finished” (19:30), Jesus said, using a word that suggests that all is now fulfilled as was planned from the beginning.
Behold the Lamb of God, with unbroken bones, who is the perfect sacrifice. Having died before his legs could be broken, a cruel action that paradoxically mercifully sped up death, Jesus is the perfect Paschal Lamb slain for the sin of the world.
Who else is there? Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea will stand up for Jesus when there is absolutely nothing to be gained by doing so. He is not yet the risen Lord. Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedren who John identifies as a secret disciple of Jesus, goes before Pilate to request the body of a crucified traitor. It is dangerous to openly advocate for someone who received the harshest penalty. To stand up for someone who is shamed is to be shamed. Yet all four gospels relate that Joseph did exactly that, and saw to it that Jesus was buried in a new tomb.
Along with Joseph, Nicodemus ignores the shame and indignity of a man in his position performing manual labor, openly carrying a 75 lb. sack through the city streets, filled with burial spices that may have been worth more than $10,000. The two august individuals make themselves unclean by seeing to the burial of Jesus’ body, yet this shaming action honors them.
